1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for licensing a software program and, more particularly, to a method for licensing one or more software programs protected by a software protection.
2. Description of the Related Art
The licensing of protected software programs is generally known. Personal computers used today, e.g., in office automation, can be efficiently used only in conjunction with a software program designed to run on them, e.g., a word processor. A software protection frequently protects such software programs against unauthorized use. This software protection is deactivated by entering an identifier, hereinafter referred to as key, which is unique for the authorized user and the corresponding software program. As long as the software protection is activated (that is, the authorized user did not deactivate the protection), the software program cannot be used or the software program can only be partially used, on the corresponding equipment. Thus, the deactivation of the software protection corresponds to a licensing of the respective software program.
The disadvantage of this prior-art method, however, is that the user must execute the licensing manually. Moreover, in order to license a number of software programs, the user must license each software program separately. The separate licensing steps required frequently differ for each software program. In addition, a separate key is provided for each software program to be licensed. A user who has successfully licensed a first software program, must still keep the respective key to license an additional software program. In addition, he or she must determine what steps have to be carried out for licensing and then individually execute these separate steps to license the software program by means of the associated key. For each software program to execute, the user must have an associated key. This procedure is complex and is susceptible to errors, especially for the inexperienced users.